christmas

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to buy all the stuff on your Amazon Wish List that you didn’t get for the holidays. Security? Thumb-Print Verification. Tools? Your sleeping mother’s thumb.

In a piece about how online shopping is killing Christmas shopping from The Wall Street Journal, the paper breezed over a tidbit about future world-leader Ashlynd Howell, writing:

"While Bethany Howell napped on the couch last week, her daughter Ashlynd, 6 years old, used her mother’s thumb to unlock her phone and open the Amazon app. “$250 later, she has shopped for all her Christmas presents on Amazon,” said Ms. Howell, of Little Rock, Ark."

Surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal buried the lead on a story that was probably written in 1997 because online shopping is killing the holidays and not this:

When his kids wouldn’t go to bed or something, YouTuber Scotty B asked his daughter to get a gift from under the tree. He then took the gift and tossed into the fire. That’s when all Hell (or just some well-deserved whining) broke loose.

His daughter called mom, and what happens next will blow your mind.

Dad reveals that it was just a Christmas joke, and the girl threatens, “I’m still telling my friends on you.”

What is it that makes Christmas music so Christmassy? Is it the chestnuts? The nutmeg? The cinnamon? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

According to this new video from Vox, it’s a special chord found in some Christmas song classics that give it that special yuletide feel.

In this video, Vox talks to Adam Ragusea from Mercer University, who explains the influences of Mariah Carey’s hit and breaks the songs down note by note. When played together, Carey’s song sounds an awful lot like Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” and the Phil Spector-penned “Baby Please Come Home.” But there’s one chord in particular that makes them brings them all together. In music terms, it’s going from a “tonic chord” to a “diminished chord.” But all you need to do is hear how similar these things seem to get the gist.

In this clip from “Adam Ruins Christmas,” Adam Conover takes audiences on an animated journey back to ancient solstice festivals to mark the end of Harvests. These parties were filled with cool things like cross dressing and fire — not tinsel, Aunt Mary-Anne. They were also the original Christmas celebrations, before a certain someone crashed the party.

Eventually, Adam tells that when Christians took over, they gradually introduced Jesus into these celebrations as a compromise. Citizens of newfound Christian municpalities could continue their celebrations if they included Jesus, so December 25 became Jesus' birthday party.

Ah, the yule log, is there anything better to cozy up to on a cold wintry night?

Not even a real fireplace could compare. After all, there’s no way to change the channel on a fireplace.

Well, I’ll give you this: One of the great things about a real fireplace is that you can actually burn something in it. Whether it’s a false ledger you use to evade your taxes, your medical records, or a written confession to a crime, nothing purifies you body and soul like a nice, cleansing fire.

So in the spirit of giving you something to burn, the folks over at The Daily Show have given you the next best thing: A burning constitution over Christmas carols and the dulcet tones of that reality TV gameshow host who won the presidency last month delivering some of his famous catchphrases, like “we’re going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again” and “bing bing bong bong.” Five-hours of Christmas cheer. Oh, it feels great to say that again: "Christmas." Remember when saying “Christmas” was punishable by death?

So put your arm around that special someone, take a sip of cocoa, and get ready for 2017 because, hoo, boy, it’s going to be a lot worse than this piece of garbage year.